Managing Your GroupWise Mailbox Size

The Problem: My GroupWise Mailbox is Full

• What's in your GroupWise mailbox? It is the space where all current email, attachments, appointments, tasks and notes are stored. It's not just the folder titled "Mailbox" but all folders, sub-folders and calendars visible in your live mailbox folder list. Your mailbox is live, dynamic and was never designed to store files permanently. While many of us are guilty of keeping a special email message around for years in our live mailbox, you just can't do this with all messages and must manage your mailbox size so there's plenty of space for the arrivial of new items.
• Why is mailbox size limited? Your mailbox size is determined by current system limitations. System limits aren't just disk space but include other factors such as network traffic, backup device capacities, disaster recovery capabilities and database size limitations. Ultimately space limits are always relaxed a bit as the technology improves and additional resources are aquired to maintain larger mailbox sizes.
• Mailbox size warnings: Our system is configured to issue canned messages to users when either of two conditions are met. When your mailbox is over 75% full and when your mailbox size is exceeded. These are self-explanatory when you see them.
• What if I exceed my mailbox limit? Once your mailbox size has exceeded it's limit, you will continue to receive mail however you will not be able to send mail until your mailbox size is brought back under the size limit.
• Visualizing Mailbox space:
  • GroupWise Client for Windows: At the very bottom of the GroupWise Client for Windows you'll see your mailbox size shown as a percentage of total space used (ie. Mailbox Size: 54%). Hovering your mouse over this will generate a pop-up showing you your total mailbox size and used vs free space statistics. Left clicking on the Mailbox Size box will open a new window with more information and options.
  • GroupWise Client for Mac and Linux: The GroupWise Client for Mac and Linux does not have a size reporting feature.
  • GroupWise WebAccess Client: Anyone logged into WebAccess (PC, Mac or Linux users) can see their mailbox size statistics by viewing the fuel gauge style size indicator in the upper right corner titled "Mailbox Usage". Hovering your mouse over the indicator will invoke a pop-up with additional information.

Attachments are not email: They gobble up your mailbox space much quicker than messages alone and have no place in your dynamic message store. If you've got your mailbox whittled down to a few hunderd messages and it's still full you're most likely using your mailbox space to store files i.e. attachments.
The body of messages, appointments and tasks usually aren't very big so they don't impact your mailbox space until you have thousands of them. Indivitual items that do adversly affect your mailbox space are messages (or appointments) that have attachments associated with them.
• What to do with Attachments: The best place to store attached files is on your computer's hard drive or your GroupWise Archive. If you receive a message with an attached file you need to keep or modify, save it to a special folder, your Desktop, My Documents or wherever you like on your computer then delete the message or it's attached file whenever it's reasonable to do so. If you prefer to use GroupWise to organize and store messages with attachments then move those messages complete with attachments to your GroupWise Archive.
  Deleted attachment laden messages will still impact your mailbox size until they are removed/deleted from the Trash folder. To recover the attachment's space immediately you'll need to empty it from the Trash folder or use "Delete and Empty" option to remove the message completely from your mailbox space.

• "Mailbox Size:" in the status bar (Windows): When you left click on the Mailbox Size reporting pane (or Tools > Check Mailbox Size) a window will open where you'll see items listed in any of the four selectable view catagories sorted by size with the largest at the top. You will immediately see which files are taking up the most space and can select items to Delete from here. Column headings can be added and may be clicked to sort on that heading.
  Note 1: Items you delete from this interface are not recoverable. Note 2: The messages displayed here are form ALL folders.
• Add a "Size" column for sorting (Mac and Windows): Another way to visualize the largest items is to add a size column to the current folder you're viewing. Right-click any of the existing column headings such as From or Subject and select "More columns" from the drop down menu. Select "Size" from "Available columns:" then click "Add" to add it to "Selected columns:" then click "Ok". The new size column should be added to your folder contents display. Clicking on this column heading will sort your mail by ascending or descending size so you can easily pick off the big ones.

Visualizing and Deleteing Old Mailbox Items: these are a couple of easy ways to visualize your messages by date

• "Mailbox Size:" in the status bar (Windows): When you left click on the Mailbox Size reporting pane (or Tools > Check Mailbox Size) a window will open where you'll see items listed in any of the four selectable view catagories sorted by size with the largest at the top. If you click on the Date column heading the messages will then be sorted by date. To reverse the sort order simply click the Date column heading again. With your messages sorted by date you can easily select outdated items to delete.
  Note 1: Items you delete from this interface are not recoverable. Note 2: The messages displayed here are form ALL folders.
• Manipulating the "Date" column (Mac and Windows): While you have any folder open click on the Date column heading once to sort your messages by date. To reverse the sort order simply click the Date column heading again. With your messages sorted by date you can easily select outdated items to delete.

Visualizing and Archiving Old or Large Items: archiving moves items from your mailbox to offline local storage

• "Mailbox Size:" in the status bar (Windows): When you left click on the Mailbox Size reporting pane (or Tools > Check Mailbox Size) a window will open where you'll see items listed in any of the four selectable view catagories sorted by size with the largest at the top. If you click on the Date column heading the messages will then be sorted by date. To reverse the sort order simply click the Date column heading again. With the messages sorted by date or size you can easily select the oldest or largest items to Archive from here. Select one or more items to archive. An Archive button is provided to the right of the message listing.
  Note 1: Items you delete from this interface are not recoverable. Note 2: The messages displayed here are form ALL folders.
• Manipulating the "Date" and "Size" columns (Mac and Windows): While you have any folder open click on either of these column headings once to sort your messages for archiving by size or date. To reverse the sort order simply click either of the column headings again. Select one or more items to archive, right click on it and select "Move to Archive".

The "Sent Items" folder:

If you're running out of Mailbox space this may very well be where the problem lies. "Sent Items" holds a copy of all messages you send out as well as any attachments. This folder, like any other, impacts your live Mailbox size so it requires regular maintenance too.

Recovering Mailbox Space After Deleteing Items:

Deleted messages will still impact your mailbox size until they are emptied from the Trash folder. As a default, this is done after a message has been there for 7 days but this is configurable. You can wait until this is done automatically or open the Trash folder and empty items yourself. To recover a deleted item's space immediately use the "Delete and Empty" option when deleting a message.

GroupWise Archiving: How-to Discussion (Mac and Windows)

Email Maintenance Best Practices: Discussion

Multiple GroupWise Archives: Discussion